


In Real Life

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Established Relationship, KNBxNBA, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 20:22:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18415163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: Tatsuya’s phone lies charging and face down on his bedside table; he still looks over for the notification light.





	In Real Life

**Author's Note:**

> 4/10 kagahimu

Tatsuya lies on the bed, phone gripped in his hand, fingers just curled under the screen to keep it in place (“get a fucking pop socket,” says Taiga’s voice in his head, and Tatsuya mentally repeats the same position he’s always held, that it’s not worth it, that he rarely holds his phone like this, that it leaves a weird shape in his pockets). His thumb hovers over the send button (or does the phone hover over his thumb?) and, instead of pressing, he lets the screen fade out into solid blackness.

It’s just a text; it’s only a few simple words. It’s a sentence he can see and read back to himself and read all the things into it that the worst part of his brain wants him too. Their relationship is still being slowly spun up like a spider’s web, not yet tied down and reinforced against the wind. The strands are strong, but worth little on their own, and with a forceful tap Tatsuya could make it swing back the other way. He knows he’s paranoid and overthinking it, just like he knows tapping his knuckles in the back of his locker won’t make him play any better but he does that every halftime. Taiga won’t overthink it or misunderstand it; Tatsuya knows Taiga the same way as he knows the physics of a dribble, palm to ball to floor to palm. He’d have said something by now, if they were in the same room, if Taiga was lying next to him.

He has things to say, but backtracking and second guesses are too fucking easy when Taiga’s on the other side of a phone connection, probably ten minutes away from checking. This text won’t be the skid that sends them over the edge or the botched landing from a J that blows out a tendon.

Tatsuya sends it, pushing the button on the side of the phone to make the screen wink out before he’s got confirmation that it’s flying over the radio waves to Chicago.

Fifteen minutes later, he flips the phone face up. The blue light is blinking; it could be his mother or a teammate, or an app for which he’d forgotten to block push notifications.

_ I miss you too. _

* * *

Tatsuya’s phone is not a status symbol. It can run the current apps and hold enough music files to get him to sleep on a long flight. He’s replaced the screen protector three times and doesn’t use a case. He flips through social media and group texts, takes selfies and plays time-killing games until he gets sick of closing out the popup ads, answers emails, but keeps the thing in his pocket during meals. It’s a tool that he’s somewhat tethered to, but because it tethers him to Taiga it’s something more.

The pulsing light could be a selfie or a text from Taiga, an invitation to talk about something or nothing at all, affirmation that Taiga wants him or is thinking of him. The absence of it could be Taiga living his life, practicing or hanging out or doing something without him; it could be disappointment. It never is, but Tatsuya expects it sometimes, flinching at a slap that never stings his face. Taiga is so open in real life—but this is real life, too. It’s their real life, between September and a jagged part of spring, apart.

Tatsuya has no desire to lose himself in Taiga, or let Taiga lose himself the other way around. They’re not the kind of people who could or would do that. But they could be more tangled, two vines stretching across a narrow span to grow over and under and around, subconsciously picking up each other’s habits, minor interests, the day-to-day changes in their bodies. Tan lines are there and then they aren’t; they pop back in the next time Tatsuya sees Taiga and he’s left feeling unfairly kept out of the loop about something that doesn’t even fucking matter. He can watch full replays of Taiga’s games and it won’t be the same as being there; the slivers of jealousy of Taiga’s teammates and opponents are not so easily poked back down into their sheaths. They prick Tatsuya’s skin and he pauses the video, disgusted with himself.

Tatsuya is not dissatisfied with his own life, his own friends and his own city and his own team. He wants Taiga’s voice to not be a memory of an echo in his mind, Taiga’s face in reaction to his words to not be a question or a figment of his imagination. Tatsuya’s used to chiding himself for wanting, for feeling the wrong thing. He’d thought he’d mostly broken that bad habit—hoped he had, but known he hadn’t, really.

Tatsuya’s phone lies charging and face down on his bedside table; he still looks over for the notification light.

* * *

Their seasons both end in early April, campaigns for anything but a tank having fizzled out before Christmas. They get to Taiga’s beach house before the busy season, before the students get out for the summer, when things are relatively quiet and Taiga goes out surfing in the morning when Tatsuya goes for a run. The sand punishes his feet, digging in like the failure he’s trying to escape, but it’s clarifying.

Being around Taiga at all is clarifying; knowing where he is and what he’s doing at this particular moment, and knowing they’ll eat lunch together and figure out of they should go shopping today or wait until tomorrow is grounding. Tatsuya still has to do all this mundane shit when he’s by himself, but this is different, and part of Tatsuya hates that it is. It’s like the distance has made him some twisted sort of needy codependent, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say he’d be needy and codependent if he and Taiga were on the moon together but being apart aggravates it like jellyfish stings. Given their history, he’d worry and walk a tight line if he had a crystal ball that said they’d be happily married for fifty years.  


There is sand and saltwater in Taiga’s hair when he hugs Tatsuya from behind, and he leaves cool wet streaks from his arm across the front of Tatsuya’s fading t-shirt.

“I don’t like having to miss you,” Taiga says.

“You were just out for a few hours.”

“You know what I mean,” says Taiga.

He plants a sloppy, salty kiss on Tatsuya’s cheek.

“Me neither,” Tatsuya admits.

It’s so much harder to deny that this is real and sustainable when Taiga’s pressing up against his back, and he could twist to see Taiga’s wide grin and sunburned nose and kiss him. Tatsuya doesn’t always have to make things harder for himself, and this is easier for Taiga, too.

“I did miss you, though,” Taiga says, though he’s said it at least five times already, and this time again it feels like cool waves washing over Tatsuya’s feet.

He turns around to drink in Taiga’s smile and slot his fingers between strands of Taiga’s hair, sand and all.


End file.
